Domestic thrillers and psychological suspense rooted in family secrets, obsession, and the people you trust most.
Secrets, Suburbia, and Lytham: Writing I Know What I Saw
Discover why J. Cronshaw set his psychological thriller I Know What I Saw in Lytham, Lancashire—a town of wealth, gossip, and hidden secrets.
When I sit down to write a psychological thriller, location is never just a backdrop—it’s a character in its own right.
The streets, the houses, the way light falls at dusk, the gossip that passes over garden fences—all of it shapes the tension.
For I Know What I Saw, I wanted a setting that held contrasts. Somewhere beautiful yet claustrophobic. Respectable on the surface, but full of shadows beneath.
Every time I visit, I’m struck by the town’s quiet elegance. Lytham isn’t loud about its wealth; it’s the sort of place where people have nice things and good manners, and both are kept polished. The lawns are trimmed, the windows gleam, and everyone knows everyone—at least on a nodding level.
It has that small-town English charm that looks idyllic from the outside, but which, in fiction, is perfect for secrets.
The main street is all boutique shops, cafés with polished brass handles, and bakeries that still use the word “artisan” without irony. There’s a rhythm to life here that feels safe and contained. That containment was exactly what I needed. I wanted my protagonist, Vicky McKeating, to live in a world where appearances matter, where the thought of neighbours whispering carries genuine weight.
Lytham has a strong sense of community, but it’s the kind that can turn sharp when something goes wrong. It’s a place of smiles in passing, charity events, and local Facebook groups that know everything before the police do.
When a body is found down a familiar footpath, as happens early in the novel, everyone feels they have the right to an opinion. In a town this size, anonymity doesn’t exist. That constant social observation—the sense that you’re always being seen—feeds straight into the paranoia at the heart of the story.
Two real locations anchor the story: Agnew Street and Serpentine Walk. I spent time walking those streets, noting the curve of the pavements and the way the light shifts in the late afternoon. Agnew Street, with its rows of red-brick terraces, feels immediately familiar to anyone who’s lived in a northern seaside town. It’s the kind of street where you can hear your neighbour’s washing machine through the wall, where curtains twitch when an ambulance drives past.
I placed the McKeating family’s house halfway down the street, between the respectable retirees and the young families who’ve stretched themselves to get onto the property ladder.
It’s a street full of quiet aspiration—people proud of what they’ve built, protective of their routines. That pride becomes important when scandal hits. No one wants police tape ruining the view.
Serpentine Walk, meanwhile, is a narrow cut-through that snakes between the terraces and the railway car park. In daylight, it’s unremarkable—a shortcut for commuters heading to the station. But at night, the atmosphere changes. The trees lean in, the lighting fades, and the sound of the trains becomes an uneasy pulse.
It’s a perfect place for something awful to happen.
When Vicky’s daughter, Hannah, claims she saw her father there, standing over their neighbour Kevin’s body, the setting adds its own chill.
The name itself—Serpentine Walk—couldn’t be more apt. It carries a sense of menace, of something winding and hidden. That subtle unease is what I wanted the whole novel to feel like. The path becomes a physical representation of doubt: twisting, shadowed, and never quite revealing what’s around the bend.
Lytham, like many affluent towns, has a particular kind of self-confidence. People move there for stability, good schools, and the sense that life can be controlled.
It’s a place where neighbours notice when you paint your front door a new colour, or when you stop turning up to the Friday-night quiz at the pub. It’s a town where reputation matters.
That obsession with image made it the ideal setting for a story about truth and perception.
When Hannah accuses her father of murder, it’s not just a family crisis—it’s a social one. The neighbours whisper. Shopkeepers go quiet. Everyone chooses a side long before the police have said a word.
In small communities like Lytham, gossip moves faster than fact. People tell themselves they’re being supportive while sharpening their stories behind closed doors.
That’s something I’ve seen firsthand, living in Lancashire myself. There’s kindness, yes—but also curiosity, and that very British instinct to keep up appearances. It’s a perfect storm for a domestic thriller.
I wanted readers to feel that tension: the sense of being watched, judged, and politely condemned.
When Vicky goes to the shops after her daughter’s accusation, she feels every stare. The friendly smiles of neighbours start to feel like interrogations. That’s what small-town life can do—it magnifies everything.
There’s also something about the sea nearby. Lytham’s proximity to the coast gives it that mix of openness and isolation.
The flatness of the landscape makes the sky feel enormous, but it also exposes you.
There’s nowhere to hide.
The wind off the estuary cuts through conversations, carrying the smell of salt and diesel. In winter, when the mist rolls in, even familiar streets feel uncertain.
That contrast—the postcard beauty and the underlying bleakness—mirrors the novel’s emotional core.
Families look perfect from a distance. It’s only when you step closer that you see the cracks in the paint, the arguments behind drawn curtains. Lytham offers both—the shine and the shadow.
The sea also plays into the novel’s rhythm. There’s a constant push and pull between calm and chaos, between the stillness of daily life and the tide of suspicion threatening to drown it.
You can feel that same tension when you stand on the promenade on a grey day, the wind snapping at your coat. It’s beautiful, but never completely gentle.
The red-brick house on the cover of I Know What I Saw could easily stand on Agnew Street. A glowing window, a dark sky, a sense that something inside isn’t quite right.
I love writing about ordinary houses because they’re where the most interesting horrors hide. No secret labs, no serial killers lurking in forests—just normal people, normal streets, and lies that start small and grow monstrous.
In a place like Lytham, the details matter. The slightly too-perfect front garden. The clink of glasses from a dinner party next door.
The curtain that moves when you’re not looking. These small domestic details give the story its authenticity.
The reader recognises them because they’ve seen them outside their own windows.
By rooting the novel in a real, recognisable town, I wanted to blur the line between fiction and reality. If a reader drives down Agnew Street or walks along Serpentine Walk, I want them to feel that flicker of unease—that thought of “this could have happened here.”
Setting the story in Lancashire wasn’t just about geography; it was about honesty.
I know the rhythms of these towns—the pride, the reserve, the gossip, the kindness.
Lytham represents a certain type of English respectability that fascinates me. People take pride in being good neighbours, yet the same instinct that builds community can also turn cruel when someone steps outside the unspoken rules.
That’s what domestic noir is all about: the private dramas that happen behind clean curtains. The polite smiles that hide resentment. The silent wars between image and reality. And those things aren’t confined to Lytham—they exist everywhere. But in a small town, there’s no escape.
The wealth in Lytham adds another layer. It’s not obscene, but it’s visible. People work hard to maintain their lifestyles. There’s pressure to conform, to present a certain image.
When scandal erupts, the fall from grace is sharper because there’s more to lose. For a writer, that’s fertile ground.
I could have set I Know What I Saw in any number of northern towns, but none would have given me the same balance of beauty and tension.
Lytham’s streets have history and character. Its residents take pride in their community. It has the sea, the golf club, the sense of safety—and yet, under that calm exterior, there’s something fragile.
When I picture Vicky walking home at dusk, every window glowing against the dark, I see Lytham.
When I think of Hannah’s accusation echoing down Agnew Street, I hear the hush that would follow in a place where everyone knows your name.
And when I imagine Serpentine Walk cordoned off by police tape, I see the same path that hundreds of ordinary people use every day without thinking twice.
That’s why it works. Because it’s real. Because the horror isn’t in some distant city—it’s just down the road, behind one of those immaculate hedges.
Writing about Lytham allowed me to hold up a mirror to the communities many of us live in: places that look perfect until you see what happens when trust breaks. The setting amplifies every theme—appearance versus reality, safety versus danger, love versus fear.
I wanted I Know What I Saw to feel like something that could happen anywhere, but with enough specificity that readers recognise the truth of it.
And there’s something uniquely British about that—our politeness, our gossip, our quiet dread of embarrassment. Lytham gave me all of it in one beautifully contained package.
The next time you walk along a tidy northern street at dusk and see a single window glowing in the dark, think about what might be happening behind the glass.
